Ukrainian government army's soldiers rest near their tank

KIEV, July 31. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s military command has promised to end the security operation in southeast Ukraine by September. Though Ukraine’s army Chief of Staff Viktor Muzhenko refused to give any concrete dates, he made it clear that will happen in less than a month.

“I would not speak about any exact date but the operation’s active phase will be over quite soon…In less than a month, perhaps,” Muzhenko said in an interview with the Novoye Vremya (New Times) magazine.

He said Ukraine did not need any full-scale mobilization, which was recently supported by parliament, any longer. “We need mobilization but on a much narrower scale than initially declared. We may eventually reduce the number of draftees,” Muzhenko told Novoye Vremya.

The press center of Ukraine’s “anti-terror” operation said on Thursday that Ukrainian troops would announce a 6-hour ceasefire every day to enable the people of Luhansk to leave the besieged city. The evacuees will be sent to a filtration camp in the village of Schastye where they will meet Ukraine’s Interior Ministry officials.

The leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics have been calling for safe corridors for civilians for a long time. On July 5, the Ukrainian army opened fire at ambulances that were evacuating the wounded from the town of Slavyansk despite the Kiev authorities’ promise to create safe corridors.

Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov has repeatedly demanded the creation of safe corridors for children trapped in the war zone.